An Overdue Thank You to My Readers

Today I received an elegant and gracious letter from a woman who had recently read Run Like a Girl. Each time I receive a missive like this, I am moved anew. Selfishly, I wrote a book because I am a writer and I love writing, the very act grants me inordinate amounts of joy. Yet, what started as this selfish act has yielded me a more profound result than ever I anticipated. Some of you, who have read the book, have been inspired or moved to reach higher, and discovered that you could. For the opportunity to participate in the tiniest way in that discovery, I am grateful down to my bones.

I’ll leave it to Yann Martel to say better what I am fumbling to express. As Martel wrote in Beatrice and Virgil (italicized explanatory note is mine), “Henry (the protagonist) had written a novel because there was a hole in him that needed filling, a question that needed answering, a patch of canvas that needed painting—that blend of anxiety, curiosity and joy that is at the origin of art—and he had filled the hole, answered the question, splashed colour on the canvas, all done for himself, because he had to. Then complete strangers told him that his book had filled a hole in them, had answered a question, had brought colour to their lives. The comfort of strangers, be it a smile, a pat on the shoulder or a word of praise, is truly a comfort.”

Indeed.

The Confidence to Race Nascar Rules

It’s been a couple of years now since I interviewed some of the women in my book. Granted, that’s not quite long enough for a really shocking “where are they now?” But I recently had the chance to catch up with Brett Buckles, who was, as some will remember, in the midst of recovering from a race career ending ski accident in Tignes, France. I was curious to know how she was adapting to her non-pro, or amateur athlete life in the slow lane (by her standards, not mine). And I should be clear here, when I say amateur, I use that term with the greatest respect. After all, the Latin root of the word is amare, which means, “to love,” as in—we do our sports because we love them, not because we gotta.

I also wanted to know if Brett had competed in a rodeo yet, one of the things she’d told me was on her list. She hadn’t…yet.

That’s because Brett is busy with about a million other things. To begin with, she’s coaching our future Ski Cross Olympians. There’s not much of a Ski Cross field in the North America yet, though it’s an established sport in Europe. It’s a fast and furious version of downhill ski racing, in which 4-6 people are on the course at the same time, competing head to head, with Nascar-style rules—“rubbing is racing.” No malicious contact is allowed, in case that wasn’t obvious.

The girls she coaches, 7-10 nationally, at any given time, are, unsurprisingly, slower to take to the sport than the boys. Fear, as you can imagine, is your biggest enemy in the sport, as it is in life, though perhaps a little more obviously when you’re hurtling down a mountain, trying to avoid skirmishes with others doing the same. Based on my fear of small rocks while on the mountain bike, I suspect I would not be good at Ski Cross. Before you leave the gate, Brett says, you have to be 100% confident in yourself. According to Brett, it takes considerably more effort to build the girls’ confidence in themselves. She blames at least part of this on how we are socialized, what she calls, “the being feminine thing,” which tells us we can’t kick ass and still be a girl.

Still. This is still an issue. Sigh. I wish for girls (and women, of course) the confidence to race Nascar rules, in whatever they do.

Fortunately for the girls Brett coaches, and injury notwithstanding, Brett-beats-all-the-boys-Buckles is still faster down the course than the 15 and 16-year old boys she coaches (I wonder how that feels for the boys?), so she can show her girls what’s available to them. So even if most of the time they are learning how to go faster by chasing the boys, at least they know, because they’ve seen it with their own eyes, what a woman can do.

Brett still feels the itch to race, if not professionally, and even if she finishes DFL (dead fucking last). When she has that goal out there, it’s the nudge she needs to push herself to the limit, or beyond—and that’s the pleasure zone for Brett in sports. She’s taken up mountain biking (no surprise) and may compete in triathlons, though she doesn’t love running (no surprise there, either, since even top speed isn’t going to get the wind whistling in your ears).

When she’s not training her girls, or herself, Brett is working on a career in journalism, writing on the gamut from snow sports to reggae music reviews. On the side she’s making jewelry. I think we can safely say that Brett has not confined herself to a darkened room to nurse her self-pity, something I needed to remind myself of on occasion, as I’ve traveled my own nano-length road (by comparison to Brett) to recovery.

p.s. I got out for a first mountain bike ride this past weekend and worked up an honest-to-goodness sweat—what joy!

Something a little different today…a tantalizing recipe (if you are inclined to the chocoholic, as I am) from Erin Bolger, the author of The Happy Baker-A Girl’s Guide To Emotional Baking.

Why? Well, another summer weekend is at our doorstep, many of us will be heading out on our longer workouts of the week, or maybe some are even doing races. Treats are in order, don’t you think?

But first, from Erin, by way of intro:

“Running. Some of us may have taken up running to get away from our exes. Some of us started for a healthier lifestyle. I basically hit the treadmill when I decided to go freelance from my comfy job with benefits and I thought running would strengthen my lungs and get me off of my expensive asthma puffers (I was right). I was also ending a long-term relationship and nothing helps you get over a break-up better than a hot post break-up bod!

As great as running’s been though, it’s not my go-to activity. Most of you run when you are stressed … I bake! I’m an emotional baker. I forget about everything when I am baking and just go to my happy place.

I have a serious sweet tooth and could easily replace cookie dough for all meals. Since this is not always the healthy choice I have created a yummy and nutritious cookie combining two of my favourite things … coconut and chocolate. Now this is not a low-fat cookie so you can’t eat it like it’s going out of style but I have been known to have one for breakie!

Happy Baking & Happy Running!”

Ditto from me. Enjoy your weekend workouts and treat yourself! Here’s how…

Chocolate Chunk Coconut Cookies

½ cup coconut oil

¾ cup coconut sugar

2 eggs

1 ½ tsp. vanilla

1 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa

1 cup unsweetened coconut

½ cup coconut flour

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

pinch of sea salt

100 grams dk chocolate, chopped (I used 72%)

Makes 2 dozen cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a mixing bowl blend together the oil and sugar until combined. Add the eggs and the vanilla; blend. Add the cocoa; blend. Stir in the flour, coconut, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix thoroughly. Stir in the dark chocolate pieces.

Make dough into 1-inch balls. Place on a lined cookie sheet and flatten with your fingers. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Let cool & Enjoy. Store in a cool dry place in an airtight container.

For more of Erin’s emotional (and let’s not forget, yummy) baking recipes, you can visit her at www.thehappybakerchick.com.

Why I Am a Vegetarian and Diana Nyad

I suppose I might have titled this, “Why I Am Not a Flesh Eater,” if I was to most closely mimic Bertrand Russell’s famous speech and essay title, Why I Am Not a Christian, off of which I was riffing, but that sounded a bit rugged for my taste, though, come to think of it, so is swimming with the sharks, which is what inspired this missive.

A friend sent me an email the other day asking, “What do you think about the sharks?” She was referring to the flurry of reader comments around a story about Diana Nyad, who, any day now, will swim from Cuba to Key West—103 miles, which is predicted to take somewhere around 60 hours. If it wasn’t already impressive, Diana is 61 years old, which certainly adds a “Wow” factor to her athletic endeavour. But there was this business of the sharks.

Re-Posted from HuffPo with title change

Apparently, most long distance swimmers who have taken on this particular challenge have swum in a shark cage, which is, as it sounds, a cage surrounding the swimmer, protecting her from those animals. The drawback (at least, a swimmer like Diana considers it a negative) is that the cages are tied to a boat and dragged along behind, which means the swimming is easier and faster (in 1997 an Australian did the Cuba-Key West swim in 24 hours with the cage-advantage).

Instead of a cage, Diana will be flanked by two kayakers with shark shields (electric shock rods) and there will be four shark divers on board the support boat, ready to dive in and spear threatening sharks to death.

To death? I missed the part where the sharks volunteered to give up their lives for Diana’s swim. I have no love of sharks in particular, but I’m not sure why creatures living in their own environment, way out at sea (we’re not talking about holiday-makers at the beach a la Jaws), may be punished for doing what they are genetically engineered to do, so that one of us humans, can pass through their environment on a personal mission to prove her strength and endurance.

Don’t get me wrong, I think personal missions of strength and endurance are to be celebrated. Such quests, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote in Flow, enable us to expand our concepts of our selves, which, in turn, builds the self-confidence that “allows us to develop skills and make significant contributions to humankind.” All good so far. And don’t get me wrong on this next—in the person vs. shark, I save the person. Still, there’s a difference between an accidental encounter and a courted encounter. As athletes, we take great care to respect our bodies, should we not extend that same respect to our environment, others, to other creatures as well? Should our athletic endeavours come at others’ expense? Diana and her sharks disturb me.

Not as much as Food Inc., which I finally got around to watching, which lifts the veil on the food industry, exposing the insidious cycles of corporate control, government support, animal cruelty and, worst of all, how this fosters our diabetes epidemic. As Eric Schlosser points out in the movie, if our food system of factory farming disdains and disrespects animal, so will we adopt this same mentality toward other living things, humans, strangers, foreigners, people with whom we disagree.

Both Diana’s sharks and Food Inc. reminded me of why I am a vegetarian. I have been so (with some early recidivism) since I was sixteen, close to 2/3rds of my life. Why?

I recently came across a Sikh story, told in Tara Brach’s book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of Buddha, which conveyed, more lyrically than I ever could, why I made this choice. The story (and I quote directly from Brach’s book):

An aged spiritual master calls his two most devoted disciples to the garden in front of his hut. Gravely, he gives each one a chicken and instructs them, “Go to where no one can see, and kill the chicken.” One of the men immediately goes behind his shed, picks up an ax and chops off his chicken’s head. The other wanders around for hours, and finally returns to his master, the chicken still alive and in hand. “Well, what happened?” the teacher asks. The disciple responds, “I can’t find a place to kill the chicken where no one can see me. Everywhere I go, the chicken sees.”

Indeed. I cannot eat something, or rather some formerly living creature, which I could not look in the eye, and then kill. The rule is my own, for me (I would not impose it on you), because not only the chicken sees, but also I see myself, and then I must live with myself. One of the cornerstones of health, something we are hyper-keyed into as athletes, is the ability to live comfortably with oneself. As much thought as we give to our workouts, that and much more we need to give to others in the world.

In Sickness and In Health

My latest post on HuffPo

The words of the traditional marriage vow might just as easily apply in any circumstance in which we join our lives with another’s, through marriage, civil union, or any other long-term domestic partnership, through birthing or adopting. The promise is not always explicit, but it’s there. I will not abandon you in your time of need. Of course, we often do. We’re human and imperfect after all. Of all the people to whom we might owe this obligation, in sickness and in health, there is one we often don’t notice, one who we cannot abandon, except through the most radical means; and that is our self.

I am stuck with me, no matter what. I’ve recently had a disconcertingly up-close-and-personal engagement with my own obligation to myself in sickness.

Five weeks ago I was colonized by bronchitis. All during the week prior I’d been clearing my throat to the point of annoyance, my partner looking at me sideways as I ahem-ahem-ahem-ahemmed, as if I was trying to get everyone’s attention to make a very important point. Out for a morning ride with a friend, I felt exhausted and cough-y, and finally gave up on the workout and headed home after only 2 of our usual 3 loops of the park. I got into bed and there I stayed, for one week, then another, and another. And the bed became the couch, because in the end I couldn’t get in and out of bed. My coughing so severe, that I fractured ribs on both sides.

I have been very lucky in life. I’ve never broken a bone. I’ve never been sick for anything longer than 5 days, and even then, not felled. Even when I had chicken pox a few years ago, an experience that can be gruesome for adults in a way it apparently isn’t for children, I slipped through the illness with relative ease. Last year when I sliced open my knee and had stitches, I was unable to do anything but walk for a couple of weeks, but the pain was manageable, the end clearly in sight from the outset.

So these past weeks have been unlike anything I’ve been through before.

I should start by saying—I am still very lucky. Bronchitis and fractured ribs are nothing, in the grand scheme of the available perils, and yet it is the very mundane-ness, which caught me short. For so little, I felt that I had stepped out of the current of my own life. The world was moving on around me, but I had slowed to a near stop. Week by week, I cancelled everything on my calendar. My most important obligation was to myself, to get well.

Things I couldn’t do with bronchitis (or at least not without inciting coughing almost to the point of vomiting):

--breathe deeply

--roll over in bed

--eat dairy, or vinegar, or anything spicy, and any number of other foods, which seemed to change by the day

--drink seltzer, or juice, or alcohol

--laugh

Things I couldn’t do with fractured ribs (or at least not without pain on the Richter scale):

--breathe deeply

--lean over the sink to wash my face or brush my teeth, not to mention spit out the toothpaste with any force…wash my hair

--open and close the front door of my apartment and my apartment building

--put on and take off underwear

--pick up my cat for a dose of purr-therapy

--take a full jug of homemade iced tea out of the fridge

--laugh

At some point along the way, I read a Buddhist blog, which encouraged slowing down, savouring, for example, each small sip of a glass of water—something I was forced into doing by circumstances. And while I agree that stillness and noticing the moments in our lives is a practice worth cultivating, I recognized too, as I hadn’t before, how much joy I take in gulping down my water, of devouring life with gusto. Noticing the small pleasures does not always require that they be slow and measured. It is the noticing that matters more than the stillness. But until I can zoom and gorge and guzzle again, I am noticing slow-style.

Almost daily I re-jig my expectations of myself. I’ve been walking in the morning. At first I walked at quarter speed. I wanted, still want to cry at times, when a fleet woman glides by, legs roped with working muscles. But I’m also enjoying the new pace. I have had time to notice the morning dogs—the big white dog of uncertain breed, with the turned out front right paw, the panting Bulldog, the fresh shaven Yorkie. Just yesterday as I caught up to a man walking slowly ahead of me, I smelled his baby before I saw the infant in his arms, that sour-milk-powdery-sleep scent of the first months of life. Running, I would never have caught that whiff, I would have passed by too quickly.

In low moments, when I longed to sink beneath the waters of self-pity (I hope I am beyond that stage now, but nothing is sure), I wondered if I’d ever get better. I wondered who I was. I wanted an explanation of why I was sick, but one that would jibe with who I thought myself to be. In the beginning, I tried to deny the pain. I like to think of myself as having a high tolerance; therefore I shouldn’t feel so much pain from coughing. When I learned that I’d fractured several ribs, the lens re-focused. Oh yes, this is painful, but I have a high tolerance, so I’ll get through this without depending on the prescribed painkillers. Not so easy. I needed to re-assess. I wanted, in sickness, to hang onto some preconceived notion of strength and resilience with which I identified myself. As if I might lose myself.

But I am right here, where I have always been, by my side, in sickness and in health. I have some weeks to go. I don’t know how many. I know that one day I will wake up and go about my day. At first, I won’t notice that there is no coughing to notice, no pain to notice. Then I will. Notice. I will think, “I’m myself again.” But it won’t be true. I’m myself now. That is a thing worth noticing.

Blueprint for a Bogey

I love go-carting. I need only get behind the wheel of a go-cart and I start laughing. On my middle brother’s wedding day, we took him go-carting in the morning, and we laughed more than we drove. I recently lucked upon an exhibit at the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art called, “Blueprint for a Bogey.” In Glasgow, a bogey refers to a homemade go-cart, built of whatever is around, and then driven with reckless abandon by their child-creators. The exhibit was about “play”—the way in which we interfere with or restrict children’s instinctive desire to play, how we seem to lose our innate ability to play as adults, and how we might reclaim that prerogative.

Did you furrow your brow at that last sentence and think, “Playing isn’t appropriate for adults,” or some version of that thought? As adults we are so good at burdening ourselves with responsibilities, obligations, and expectations, that we sometimes feel shackled to our lives. Playing is the opposite—free, light, spacious, and unbounded. After all, play is a creative engagement with the world, without end, or purpose. Sounds grand.

Yet, as adults, we too often find it challenging to play. Everything we do has to have an agenda, even things that look, at first blush, like play, are, on closer examination, really pursuits in which we are aiming toward a goal—to achieve a certain skill level, to do a race or event, to get fit or lose weight, to win.

I was recently out playing on my slackline with my partner. That is, a tightrope-like piece of webbing, easily secured around two nicely spaced trees; and, in our case, low to the soft, grassy ground. A dog-walking woman asked, “Are you training for something?” Her question gave me pause. My only objective was to have fun; to relax; to enjoy hanging out in the park, listening to the thump of the basketball on the nearby court, watching the amazing variety of dogs as they sashayed past; to lean up against the fat tree and feel the rough ridges of bark digging into my back when it wasn’t my turn on the line. Was I being too aimless? Did I need to get more serious?

As adults we like to have an answer to the question “why” when we are doing something. We feel uncomfortable if there’s no good reason to pursue a particular activity. Add to that that we feel uncomfortable if we aren’t good at something. We reach a certain age and think we ought to be accomplished at everything we pursue. Think—how limiting is our desire or need to be expert. Add on top of that our fear of looking foolish, which increases with our age. Think more—how limiting is our desire or need to be thought well of.

Playing unfetters us. And what a relief it is to live, even if for only short interludes, in the wide-open expanse of playtime. How much more creativity and energy we will be able to bring to the rest of our lives.

Only days after I saw the Glasgow exhibit, a group of girlfriends took me out for a “mystery activity” night. I was instructed to meet them on a particular corner, wearing casual clothes, no skirt or dress. When I saw the mechanical bull in the middle of the appointed venue, I almost balked. No way. Not with people watching me. I’d make a fool of myself (I didn’t know at the time that Sex & the City had apparently bestowed a certain cool on the activity). Then I stopped to think more about that last—foolish? In whose eyes? Why? And why did I care?

I rode the bull. It was fun, and almost as exhilarating as go-carting. Like a child, I could have gotten right back on for a second ride.

Re-posted from Huffington Post

First Huff Post...

Just up--my first piece on Huffington Post: The Unifying Goal or The Goal of Everything.

Check it out.